10/10
Yolanda Kondonassis, harp; Interlochen Center for the Arts Orchestra & Chorus, Andrew Grams, conductor and Carter Smith, choral director.
Azica, 2026.๎น๎
When Reena Esmail began composing a new concerto for harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, it was just days before disaster struck. Living in Altadena, she and her family were forced to evacuate during the first week of 2025 as wildfires tore through the region. From the hills, they watched the devastation unfold, an experience that sparked Esmailโs vision to musically portray Earth as both fragile and fiercely powerful.
Terra Infirma emerges quite literally from the ashes, a way to make sense of the natural world. Itโs truly a collaboration among like-minded artists both seeking to reimagine the harp concerto in a contemporary, compelling form while grappling with environmental loss.
Its title work, a seven-movement concerto for harp and percussion, is performed entirely by Kondonassis, who navigates both roles with striking theatricality. Moving across the stage, harp in tow, she engages directly with suspended percussion, transforming the piece into something between concert, performance art, and ritual.
The concerto opens with an atmosphere both eerie and alluring. The first track, bone-colored branches,combinestextures of slipping strings and shimmering cymbals that conjure a landscape of uneasy beauty. Even in drought, the music suggests, there is a seductive calm. But that calm gives way to smoldering intensity, building toward a violent, fiery climax in immolation, a duet consumed by flame that evokes destruction in visceral terms.
Yet Esmail does not leave the listener in devastation. In helium ember, she reframes fire as illumination and release. Drawing on the expressive traditions of ancient Hindustani raags that depict Deepak as fire and Megh as rain, the soundscape becomes one of renewal. The music blossoms with energy, highlighted by radiant cello lines and harp textures that drift like ash rising into the sky.
The next movement, roaming the ghost forest, inhabits a more spectral world of hissing embers and dampened ash. Its soundscape is unsettling, even dangerous and yet so meticulously crafted, it showcases Esmailโs signature sense of refinement and bringing beauty into all she creates. Though shadowed in tone, skeletal silhouette invites immersion, culminating in a striking passage where the trees seem to sing, one of the concertoโs most haunting sonic moments.
Fire remains a constant presence. In swallowed, driving rhythms pulse with danger, periodically softened by the harpโs deep, restorative calm. The music suggests endurance, carrying us toward facing the flame, where destruction and renewal coexist, snow melting into life-giving water, hinting at continuity beyond loss.
The album also includes reimagined works for harp, Sandhiprakash (โthe joining of lightโ), a ravishing duet between Kondonassis and the exquisite violinist Vijay Gupta. In Earth Speaks: Curiosity, Esmail incorporates a list of stops from the 2011 Mars Curiosity rover, alongside haikus submitted to commemorate its launch, blending science, poetry, and music into a meditation on exploration and wonder.
Part of a larger, multi-year project, Terra Infirma features conductors Andrew Grams and Carter Smith with the orchestra and chorus of the Interlochen Arts Academy, where Kondonassis was a graduate in 1982 (along with me!) adding a personal resonance to a recording that is as reflective as it is forward-looking.
